Wednesday, 5 August 2015

…Hello. Remember me? Sorry about the tumbleweed, I've been busy writing things. I still am, but I'm going to try to get back into the habit of putting things up here as well.

Recently, I was for a few days looking after my friends' dog, captured here in a typical moment of meditative thoughtfulness:

One of the solemn duties of whoever is lucky enough to be custodian of this large brown idiot is to give him a pill in the morning. He won't eat the pill on its own, so I found the easiest way to get him to take it was to use a dab of butter to stick it to a dog biscuit, and toss him that. I was constructing this cunning pill / biscuit Trojan Horse the other morning, with the dog watching me attentively, when I accidentally dropped the pill. As it rolled off the kitchen counter to the waiting dog below, I called out, instinctively… 'Leave it!'

Yeah, quick thinking, genius. Because it would be terrible if the dog ate the pill before you put it on the biscuit that makes him eat the pill...

23
comments:

Next time you should try to open his mouth wide, drop the pill down the back of his gullet, hold his jaws shut, and rub his throat until he swallows a couple of times. Works 99 times out of a hundred on my parents' dog. If that doesn't work, stick the pill in a piece of cheddar cheese.

I was surprised to find another excellent Finnemore-related programme broadcast on Radio 4 last Monday that didn't get any fanfare on here beforehand. Thankfully I had the radio switched on at the time, because listening to Stephanie Cole reading Dorothy Parker is something absolutely not to be missed. Thank you so much for causing that to happen.

For anyone who didn't notice it was on, "With Great Pleasure" is still available on iPlayer at the moment.

I half hoped that story would end with the large brown idiot rushing the pill and devouring it with the relish of having captured a stolen treat; in my experience what hits the floor is fair game, edible or not. But then perhaps this large idiot has better training than some I have known :)

Even though the dog's name obviously isn't, I am still calling this a Snoopadoop tale. Perhaps one of my favourite moments in Cabin Pressure is in Ottery Saint Mary where Hercules and Carolyn are on the date and Herc keeps commenting on how rediculous the dog is "snoopadoop the cockapoo, noblest of hounds"